


The Pleasure of that Madness

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angry Sex, Angst, Bondage, Characters with History, Imprisonment, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Partnership, Shakespearean references, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-22
Updated: 2009-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Occasionally Artie wakes the monster in the cage. This isn't much like Romeo and Juliet at all, but there is history, and some days that is enough. Diverts from canon approximately 6mins before the end of S1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pleasure of that Madness

**Author's Note:**

> **Regarding the warnings**: While I don't believe this is dubcon, I should note that one of the parties is canonically in sci-fi plot-device prison. So while he's consenting to the sexual activity, he is semi-lawfully imprisoned at the time - be careful if that's likely to squick you.
> 
> And with thanks to [raedbard](http://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard) for introducing me to the show.

The first time could have been an accident. Or, at most, a temporary and understandable lapse in judgement.

Artie hits reverse and watches James turn from smooth bronze to creased untidy life. He waits just long enough that James smiles at him through the fog.

Artie stabs the button to repeat the process with more vigour than is perhaps truly necessary.

 

* * *

The second time, he knows what he's doing. James will have the answer and though Artie cannot possibly trust what the man says, he still finds himself in the Bronze Sector.

James coughs when the reversal is complete – an affectation, as it really is a painless process. He looks at Artie expectantly.

"There was an artifact," Artie says without preamble. "Late fifteenth century and we never did find out who they belonged to. Sammy – you remember Sammy? – called them X-Ray specs although that was patently not the case. Did we end up classifying them as-?"

"Low-risk medical, high-risk weaponised. One-dash-seven-dash-nine-dash… something. And I still believe they belonged to Leonardo da Vinci."

"There was no _proof_, James. And da Vinci didn't wear glasses."

James shrugs, and this leaves them in unhappy silence. Artie had wanted – expected, anyway – that this conversation would take longer.

Artie nods and pushes the button. James holds eye contact until he can't do it any longer.

 

* * *

Before, Artie had stayed behind the console for the entire time. But he is angry today. He hits reverse and is talking before James has convinced his fingers to twitch. Artie walks paths across the room.

"-children!" he says. "Children. We were never that young. We made mistakes, of course we did, some of us more than others, but we were never so wilfully _stupid_, surely?"

He stops because James is laughing.

Artie is beside James without consciously deciding to walk there. He waves one finger in James's face and James- James leans towards him. James is secured only at the wrists and so he still manages to lean forward, louche and self-assured. James snaps his teeth at Artie's finger.

Artie jerks back. "What in God's name is wrong with you?"

"A sadly deprived appetite. How long has it been, Arthur?"

Fifteen years since he walked through fire and into prison. Sixteen since the fight and eighteen since the wedding. Or does he mean the small numbers? Six months since I caught you. Four days since the last time I hacked my own computers to hide that I had been down here again. Two weeks since I last threw the switch and let you take another breath you weren't supposed to have. Again. "Six months," Artie says.

James's lips part. "Ah."

"Ah? What 'Ah'? We're done here. Never again. You hear that, James? Never."

"If you say so."

Artie starts the process again. James's eyes close before the gases get that far; lashes light against the dark circles beneath his eyes. He used to close his eyes as Artie leant in to kiss him and then open them again just before they touched. He would laugh at Artie's surprise, his open mouth a perfect invitation. Nothing about it had ever been easy, but that had been the closest thing.

 

* * *

This is a habit he needs to break. Artie doesn't have vices. He has his work. He has, perhaps, a few character traits which Claudia considers idiosyncratic (his words) and borderline crazy obsessive compulsive (hers). But he's never been the kind of man who needs to prod at a wound to prove that it still hurts. Only with Carol. Only with James.

James doesn't speak. He blinks slowly at Artie.

Artie waits and then asks, "What?"

"I was asleep."

"You weren't- Don't be ridiculous."

"I slept," James insists. "The world on fire and you looked to me. What can you possibly have wanted?"

"I don't want anything from you, James."

"Not now, perhaps. But you did, once."

"Yes," he admits. "Once. We were both younger then."

"You more than me," James says. "That is one benefit of my captivity. You're the only one of us who grows old in the witnessing."

"Not so old," Artie says.

James says, "Not in years," and Artie throws the switch.

He stays there a little longer, afterwards. Watching James's unnaturally mild expression and growing older.

 

* * *

Artie has his hand on the button after time five.

James stares at him. "'Wilt thou leave me _so_ unsatisfied?'"

"You're reading the woman's part," Artie says shortly. "And anyway the end of that particular exchange is love. You don't understand the concept."

"Arthur-."

"Or you've forgotten. Long ago. Along with loyalty. And restraint. And… and… _sanity_."

"I'm perfectly sane," James says.

He is, for some definition of sane. He's not deluded, precisely. He just took his always-curving morals for a walk one day and saw where it led him. The world was filled with possibilities for a man of power – a man with the right kind of will.

James says, "Come here, Arthur."

Artie asks, "What?" but walks away from the console. Pete, damn him, was not wrong about James's voice. It is calculated to move mountains. Artie is – they are all – too intelligent to be drawn into inadvertent world conquest. But he can be willed across a room. "What, James?" Artie asks again.

"Bertram then," James says. "And you my poor deluded Helena. But I come back to you at the close. 'All's Well That Ends Well'."

"Helena was a fool," Artie says. "She chased after him." He takes a step closer to James.

"As you chased me, when others could have completed the task just as well. As you tricked me. Now take your prize."

"I don't want anything you could give me." James's expression doesn't shift even though Artie says this while taking one more step towards him.

"We've been here before."

"You have a _wife_, James."

James laughs. "I'm officially dead now. And I was declared dead even before that, after the explosion. I believe the government may have released Carol from her legal knot by this point."

Another step.

"A kiss, old friend," James says. "For old friendship's sake. Before you press that switch again and condemn me to the silence."

The sibilants of that last 'silence' become trapped between their mouths. Silence for them both. James cannot move and Artie is listening – still – for any sound of protest. Of ridicule. But James is silent until he hums against Artie's mouth. "Hmm…"

There is a noise somewhere out in the Warehouse. Artie jolts backwards as though he has been stung, jumping off the edge of the machine.

He doesn't know whether James watches him hit the switch; he doesn't look.

 

* * *

"Back again?" James asks.

Artie doesn't say anything. He drags a chair to the console and sits there, among the bronzed men and women, in silence.

James keeps talking. "You look older. Has it been so long? Or is this just the work?"

Artie leans his head on the edge of the console, just for a moment.

"An entire building, full of the ancient and unusable – and you. You're the worst of them all, Arthur. You'll rot away in here with the rest of them. Wasting. Un_touched_."

He's not a saint. He is an agent and he was a spy. But he is a man. He was a man first. The curious thing, he supposes, is that he and James were always agents above all else. Artie had thought that was true for them both. But James always makes the inalienable truths a little hazy.

James says, "I can't tell the time down here. Do you sneak away from them in the middle of the day, making excuses for your absence? No Farnsworth, I see. Is that because you're hiding from them or because it's midnight and they're safe at home? Dreaming their safe little dreams of an orderly world and their unblinking guardian here at the gates of the chaos realm. You shouldn't stay here, Arthur."

Artie knows this. This is unhealthy, and dangerous, and quite probably illegal. If any normal rules of legality applied in this place. They don't.

"Why so silent?" James asks. "Have I touched a nerve? It isn't fun when you don't talk back, you know. Although I suppose I could take the opportunity to have you listen. You gave up on me first, Arthur."

Artie tilts his head to better look at James, but doesn't speak. The metal of the console is cool beneath his cheek.

James says, "You put this place before the people in it. Which suits your own particular definition of nobility I suppose, but it's hardly _human_. Hardly commendable, to choose an ideal over the lives those ideals are built on. I would never have done it. And if you hadn't-. Think what we could have built together. A waste, you said, isn't that right?"

When it becomes apparent that Artie isn't going to talk back, James drifts onto another topic. History, philosophy, physics. All the conversations they had so many times over that he knows Artie's side of the argument as well as his own. Artie sits in silence and lets James talk to him for a little while.

Artie picks at the speck of blood on his shirt-cuff. He walks forward, grabs the lapels of James's jacket, and pulls himself close enough for a kiss.

* * *

James laughs. "Sometimes I think you would like to swap places."

"I'm not taking off the restraints," Artie says.

"Of course, of course." James looks at him. "Still. Sometimes, wouldn't you like someone else to be the one out there, 'saving the world'? From itself, mostly. At least it's quiet here."

"You hate the quiet."

"True."

"What do you want, James?"

"You're the one who keeps waking me up. My very own Prince Charming, if that gentleman was in the habit of returning the fair maiden to her state of repose once he got bored with her."

Artie sits in the chair, facing the machine. Facing James. "One thing I can say about you, James. You're never boring."

"No."

Once upon a time (to borrow the current imagery of choice) this had been foreplay. They had sent barbs at each other for hours, on road-trips and in hotel stays, hunting artifacts across the globe. They had been young and very foolish. Every insult was a test: to prove who was smarter, who was quicker, who was better. Who would break first.

They had always shown teeth, but it was only afterwards that blood had been drawn. Their own, but other people's too, and that had been the final straw.

"Arthur," James murmurs.

"What?"

"Come here."

"Why should I?"

"Because you want to. And I won't tell if you don't."

The machine isn't designed for someone to stand this close. He's inside it now – someone could shut the doors around them and freeze them both together. Or James could wrap his legs around Artie's waist and begin snapping bones. Or else he could hook his legs around Artie's thighs and do that.

"James."

"Shush. Ssh, Arthur, I have you."

They rock together, age-old rhythm like the ticking of clocks. Artie finds his hands braced on the restraints; James strains his fingers and Artie moves his own an inch closer. Once, Artie had slipped off a rooftop in the chase, and James had moved before anyone else would have thought to shout. His fingers had clamped around Artie's wrist and they had both dangled there, half over the edge, until help arrived. There is a bare V of skin at the top of James' shirt, beneath his collarbone. Artie mouths his 'why?' there, one more time.

James's voice is hoarse when he comes, though it is hardly from lack of use. He says, "Arthur," with a crack in it.

Artie wishes to God he hadn't said James.

He cleans them up – both of them – while James hums tunelessly to himself.

"This is the end," Artie says. "I mean it. This isn't-."

"Right?" James offers. "Proper?"

"Be quiet," Artie says. "Please." He leans up and closes his eyes before kissing the corner of James's mouth.

James leans into him and mutters, "'_Thus with a kiss, I die_.' Do we have anything of Shakespeare's down here? We must do, surely. A quill? A skull, perhaps. Or would that be a little tasteless?"

Artie laughs. "His second-best bed. Bequeathed to his wife."

"Really. And what does that give the user?"

"Strange dreams."

There is a long moment of silence.

"Arthur," James says.

"Yes?"

"Weren't you in the middle of something?"

"Oh. Yes." He steps off the platform and stands in front of the controls. When he looks up, James is staring at him. Artie says, "This was the last time."

"I know," James says.

"Goodbye, James."

"'_Good-night, good-night. Parting is such sweet sorrow_.'"

Artie pushes the button.

The doors close as James says, "'_That I shall say good-night_'."

He mouths the last words through the glass as the clouds rise.

Artie says them with him. "'_Till it be morrow_.'"

**Author's Note:**

> All the quotes are from 'Romeo and Juliet', but Bertram and Helena refers to 'All's Well That End's Well'. The title is from 'The Winter's Tale'.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Pleasure of that Madness by BlackEyedGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/751010) by [fire_juggler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_juggler/pseuds/fire_juggler)




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